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#IMWAYR June 5, 2017

Hello Everyone!

#IMWAYR time
again, when readers share what they have been reading and find out what others
have been up to in the past week. Kathryn hosts the adult version of this meme
at Book Date. Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. Whatever you are looking forward to in your
next great read, these are fabulous places to start your search.

Gardening takes up a huge chunk of my time these days. I keep thinking that when I have
everything weeded and planted, I will have more time to read, relax and do
housework.

I know better though.

I'm finishing
up a couple of quilts that were started by other people. One is a postage stamp
quilt that my mother didn't get a chance to finish before she died. The other
is a baby quilt abandoned by a sister in law. I'm hoping to get that one finished for
a new nephew of ours.

Other than
all that, around here we are all in a heightened state of excitement. Both of my daughter-in-laws are due anytime within the next couple of weeks. My partner and I are eagerly
looking forward to joining the grandparent club. My sons are thankful that they are going through this together.

NOVELS

4 stars

Hello,
Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly

I think I
enjoyed this one even more than Blackbird Fly. These characters: Virgil
Salinas, Valencia Somerset, Kaori Tanaka and her little sister Gen, and even
Chet Bullens, the bully, became important to me. I appreciated the magical
realism components and how their stories all came together.

4 stars

Beyond the
Bright Sea by Lauren Wolk & Jorjeana Marie (Narrator)

Crow lives on
an island with her father figure, Osh, and their close friend Miss Maggie. The
other islanders fear her because she has come from a nearby island
that housed lepers. Crow's desire to find out more about where she comes from ends
up putting all of them in terrible danger. As in Wolf Hollow, Wolk has created
another truly evil character. The difference this time is that he is already
fully grown and his lack of dimensionality didn't bother me. It helped that
Crow is such a strong independent character, and that the adults in her life
are solid and approachable.

NONFICTION

I am in an adult nonfiction phase these days. The more I read, the more I want to read.

5 stars

The Case
Against Sugar by Gary Taube & Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

I quit eating all forms of sugar earlier this year because of how addicted I had become. It wasn't
easy to stop, and I haven't been completely sugar free since. I can't begin to
tell you how much better I feel. Then my daughter-in-law was diagnosed with
gestational diabetes.

I picked up
this to find out more about the 'white death' as my partner calls it.

The book is
fascinating. Taubes takes us through the history of sugar and our relationships
with it. He reveals the machinations of the sugar industry's research
foundation and how they have managed time and again, to obfuscate results,
deter research and focus away from the amount of sugar now in our diets.Did you know
that "we now eat in two weeks the amount of sugar our ancestors of 200
years ago ate in a whole year."

Part of what
was both depressing and enlightening is the realization that the tactics of the sugar consortium were later implemented by the tobacco industry (often with the same scientists) and we can
see the same game plans in place with the fossil fuel industry.

No wonder
people have a hard time accepting science.

In the end,
Taubes acknowledges that there is no definitive evidence that sugar is
responsible for diabetes, heart disease, cancer and a plethora of other
illnesses, but the circumstantial evidence is very powerful.

I will definitely purchase a copy of this for myself.

5 stars

Being Mortal:
Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande & Robert Petkoff
(Narrator)

This book has
been on my radar ever since it was recommended to me last year when my mother
was dying.

These days I
have been spending time at the hospital with an aging cousin whose prospects
are not looking good.

This book is
a reminder of how important it is to ensure that people live their lives to the
fullest before finally dying. I wept a number of times while listening to the
different stories.

I'm going to
be sixtyfour soon and if I live as long as my mother, I will have a couple of
decades left, but after reading this book, I'm aware of how fleeting this
living business is, and how important it is to have hard conversations about
how we want to spend the last days of our time on this earth.

CURRENTLY

I haven't
started a new audiobook yet. I'm reading The Impossible Fortress: A Novel by
Jason Rekulak.

UP NEXT

I've just
downloaded The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen so tomorrow while I am out
gardening I will listen to it. I plan to read Amina's Voice by Hena Khan and
Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded by Sage Blackwood. I've also
got a pile of picture books to get to. I'm determined to start At Home: A Short
History of Private Life, a book my son gave me.

16 comments:

Both nonfiction books sound great. Being Mortal has been on my radar for a long time, but I've put it off because it seems that it would be sad or depressing. I liked Hello Universe a lot, too. The only other book I read by the author was The Land of Forgotten Girls and I definitely like this one better.

I've shared an adult nf book today, Cheriee, that you might enjoy. I love non-fiction too, and both of your books sound good in different ways. I know about the children's books, and hope I can read them soon. There are so many good ones that are being shared. It's exciting to hear about those coming grand babies! Congratulations!

Being Mortal does sound like something I should try - my dad (who's sixty-five) was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, and although I knew in a general sense that my parents wouldn't be around forever, it was the first time I actually had to face that prospect. It's definitely been a challenge, but a necessary one that I'm sure everyone has to deal with at some point.

I know a lot of reviewers have liked Hello, Universe. I thought it was ok. Maybe since I read it electronically I just couldn't get into it? I did like Beyond the Bright Sea. Wolk does have some amazing writing chops!

I thought Being Mortal was superb and a must-read for basically everyone. One I'd like to reread at some point, maybe on audio. I'm really looking forward to that Erin Estrada Kelly novel--I just requested that my library purchase. I love spending their money on new books!

About Me

Across my teaching career I have taught combinations of mixed age groupings from kindergarten to grade 5. I was an ESL teacher for a number of years and am now a teacher librarian at Charles Dickens Elementary School in Vancouver, B.C.